Things That are Not the Same

Inspired, a month and a half on, by otherposts by my co-conspirators on language usage, I’ve been thinking about how we in the movement(s) so often talk past each other, without always immediately realizing it. We use the same words to mean different things. To help clarify this issue, I present a list—not exhaustive—of phrases and concepts that, contrary to occasional usage if not popular opinion, are not, in fact, identical:

Reduction or elimination of an aspect of male privilege ≠ sexism against men

Women have sexual autonomy ≠ women are in charge

Rape ≠ false rape accusations

Some men are raped ≠ no women are raped

Some accusations are erroneous ≠ most (or even many) accusations are false

Some accusations are false ≠ many accusations are false

Some accusations are true ≠ all accusations are true

Due process of law ≠ personally defaulting to doubting the accuser

Most victims are female ≠ no victims are male

Most victims are female ≠ no perpetrators are female

Many perpetrators are men ≠ all (or even most) men are rapists

I’ve mingled “people say p when they mean q” and “when some people say p, other people hear q” and “people attack (defend) p in order to attack (defend) q” but they all somewhat overlap anyway. I welcome contributions in comments. I think.

Leave a Reply

BlackHumor: I stand corrected on the gender ratio being 53/47 based on the data-table presented in the article you linked to for people under 5″. I was fooled by the left tail of the chart. However, I now note that the site you linked to didn’t give any source for the height data and they even used this wording about the table data: we would expect to get statistics that look like the ones below Which kind of made me wonder if the data is just made up or extrapolated. This made me want to look up better data and… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Xakudo

6 years 1 month ago

@BlackHumor: So asking about acts of violence as a way to measure abuse already makes the CTS and derivatives imperfect. I agree with this statement, except insofar as the assertion about the CTS2 goes. IIRC the CTS2 (and I believe even the original CTS) does include verbal abuse, etc. in its questions. Of course, how various studies are using the CTS2 is another question, since they will make their own determinations about what questions actually constitute violence. But that is not a problem with the instrument itself. Also, regarding one of Amp’s critiques that I find particularly disingenuous, and that… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Schala

6 years 1 month ago

Also, which instrument measures psychological violence BlackHumor?

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Schala

6 years 1 month ago

“under 150 cm tall”

150 cm is 4’11”, because 1 inch is 2.54 cm (149.86 cm to be exact).

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

Or that a rape *in defence* somehow doesn’t count as rape?

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@BlackHumor

“Asking about acts of violence as a way to measure abuse already makes the CTS and derivatives imperfect.”

How does it make it ‘imperfect’ when it comes to sexual abuse? Are you going to argue that people rape *in defence*?

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

BlackHumor

6 years 1 month ago

@Tamen: Unless I’ve mistaken then Ampersand has critiqued CTS. CTS2 is a revised version of CTS and the revision address some of the critique against CTS. One would do well to not treat CTS and CTS2 as interchangable Oh, it does fix many of the problems, but not all of them. Including the most serious problem, that it’s not true that someone who hits their partner a lot is necessarily what we generally mean by abusive (a couple that brawls often is unhealthy but they’re not trying to control each other; furthermore there are some rare and not-so-rare situations where… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@ Brian

Also, the NVAWS used the CST2 methodology except that they _omitted_ several categories of female-on-male sexual abuse. As Daran pointed out on one of his posts–can’t remember where–this is an extremely unusual practice. To arbitrarily change an established instrument without explaining why.

Therefore if you have a problem with the CST2 then you must also have a problem with the NVAWS.

That leaves us with… nothing. Absolutely zero evidence that men or women are raped more.

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

The more I read the more it looks like the CST2 is a far more reliable instrument. Not only does it capture female victimization that isn’t captured by other instruments, it also captures male victimization that isn’t captured by other instruments. Finally, if feminists are going to repudiate the CST2 then they better stop referring to the rates of sexual and domestic abuse found by the CST2. @ Brian “To know for certain a question is biased, you need to ask it of a population with known properties and see if it causes a result significantly different from the true… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@ Daran As far as I can tell the study “Accuracy of Adult Recollections of Childhood Victimization: Part 2. Childhood Sexual Abuse” pretty much negates the methodology used in that study and any other with similar studies as reliable for capturing male victimization. It’s right there in the study. Unless I’m deeply mistaken. Therefore any studies based on the same methodology cannot be relied upon to capture male victimization to any extent. In their conclusion they state: “For researchers, the underreporting of childhood sexual abuse poses a serious concern for epidemiological research, especially that which involves a large proportion of… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Schala

6 years 1 month ago

Yeah dwarfism seems to affect men and women about equally, but above this height (yet below 5 feet) women are disproportionately represented for the US.

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

Tamen

6 years 1 month ago

BlackHumor: Unless I’ve mistaken then Ampersand has critiqued CTS. CTS2 is a revised version of CTS and the revision address some of the critique against CTS. One would do well to not treat CTS and CTS2 as interchangable. if I counted the number of boys and girls under 5 feet tall, it would seem obvious that it would bias my results severely towards women, but actually it wouldn’t result in any kind of bias at all, at least not any that’s relevant to the question we’re asking. This doesn’t make any sense and the link you provided does not help… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

BlackHumor

6 years 1 month ago

@Daran: I’m saying not all of the flaws in the studies are known to bias them towards underreporting male victimization. At least, not exclusively; I remain unconvinced that the gigantic difference in the NCVS can be entirely explained by men reporting rape less (though clearly men are underreporting more than women the extent they would have to be underreporting more is still implausible), and there are at least two of the child rape studies that as far as we know have no bias in that area at all. And even in the ones you’ve pointed out, just because a question… Read more »

The problem with that analogy is that you’ve specified flaws that bias all your measurements one way. But the flaws in the actual survey instrument are not (all) known to bias the measurements in the way we’re concerned about,… I’m not understanding your point. Are you claiming that in addition to flaws which bias the surveys into underreporting male victimisation there are additional flaws which bias the survey into underreporting female victimisation? If so please point out these flaws Or are you saying that in addition to flaws which bias the surveys into underreporting male victimisation, there are additional flaws… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

BlackHumor

6 years 1 month ago

Eeh, just realized my pronoun is ambiguous. The “it” in my third sentence is the study in Typhon 10:30, not the “this” in my second sentence.

And the original study definitely seems to imply it’s got some kind of commentary on the TES.

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

Your first two links link to the same source. Also I don’t think it’s a source for the Traumatic Events Survey but the Traumatic Symptom Inventory.

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

I have the last study(I’ll get the others later). That study was essentially divided into three parts. The first part was a general survey on the *rate* of child sexual abuse for both men and women. The second part was an examination of how often people with documented histories of child sexual abuse reported it as an adult. The third one was on construct validity. The first part found the following: “For all three, women reported higher rates than did men. More than one third of the women considered any of the experiences to have been sexual abuse, compared with… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

BlackHumor

6 years 1 month ago

@Daran 12:01 (ton of posts to reply to, so in the interest of brevity I’m only going to reply to this one and hope it summarizes my argument): The problem with that analogy is that you’ve specified flaws that bias all your measurements one way. But the flaws in the actual survey instrument are not (all) known to bias the measurements in the way we’re concerned about, and even when it seems likely that they do we’re not sure how much they bias it. You’re begging the question; we know all the studies are weak, but we don’t know they’re… Read more »

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@ Daran “Not available on the internet ≠ no reasonable way of accessing.” Actually, not being able to access it through academic databases is unreasonable. At least in the field I’m researching in. Is it reasonable for sociologists to use an instrument that people can only access through them? Also, it sort of makes me suspicious that I can’t find a review _anywhere_ of this instrument that clearly lays out its methodology. I’m not in the field but I have never seen this before in mine. Usually researchers take pains to either clearly lay out their methodology or point to… Read more »

Not available on the internet ≠ no reasonable way of accessing. You could probably get a copy by emailing one of the researchers involved.

I just don’t have the time or inclination to do so.

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@ Daran

Is it usual for people to use a survey instrument that there is no reasonable way of accessing?

0

| ShareHide Replies ∧

Guest

typhonblue

6 years 1 month ago

@ Daran Unfortunately the cite for the survey itself is: Elliott, D. M. (1992). Traumatic Events Survey. Unpublished psychological test. Los Angeles: Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. An unpublished psychological test is rather unpromising. “The two sexual abuse items are: (1) “Before the age of 18, did anyone 5 or more years older than you ever kiss or touch you in a sexual way or have you touch them in a sexual way,” and (2) “Before the age of 18, did anyone less than 5 years older than you use physical force to kiss or touch you in a sexual way, or… Read more »